The General Assembly's death panel

January 27, 2011|By Tamara Dietrich

Social conservatism doesn't usually come with a body count.

But if social conservatives succeed in repealing Virginia's unique law which requires vaccinating sixth-grade girls against a virus that's the main cause of cervical cancer, it could lead to needless deaths.

Not right away. But in 10 years. Or 20. Or later.

In other words, long after the lawmakers now batting around heated rhetoric in Richmond have forgotten all about those sixth-graders that they currently insist they care about so very, very deeply.

By then, these girls will be all grown up. Except, of course, for those who've succumbed to cervical cancer.

But that's the price people like Del. Kathy Byron seem willing to pay. The Republican from Lynchburg sponsored the repeal bill.

"The long-term safety and effectiveness of this vaccine is unknown," Byron said last week, either willfully ignoring or conveniently forgetting that the federal National Vaccine Advisory Committee urges immunization. As do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society.

The FDA approved the vaccine as safe and effective five years ago. The next year, the General Assembly voted to vaccinate 11- and 12-year-old girls before they could attend public schools. Medical experts say it's crucial to inoculate before any sexual activity occurs.

"We just want to make sure," Byron has said, "parents are evaluating the risks of what they're giving their daughters, and not a legislative body."

Done and done.

The law already allows parent to opt out of HPV vaccinations for any reason. In fact, most do. Last fall, less than one in five in-coming sixth-grade girls received the first vaccination, according to the state Division of Immunization.

Evidence aplenty that parents are already evaluating the risks. Granted, they're also ignoring the advice of medical experts — but so much for big, bad government browbeating families.

"I don't think," Byron has also said, "that we have the medical degree to make those decisions."

Au contraire, Kathy.

Her fellow Republican — Christopher P. Stolle of Virginia Beach — does have a medical degree. He's an obstetrician and gynecologist.

And he stood in the House of Delegates last Thursday to explain to Byron and her cohorts that repealing the mandate would mean as many as 1,300 more women a year would die.

"I very, very strongly oppose this bill," Stolle said.

In fact, using Byron's own logic, where on earth is her medical degree — or any evidence or expertise whatsoever — to argue that the vaccine is anything other than as safe and effective as any other?

In fact, where is her repeal bill for legislation passed in 2006 to mandate another new childhood vaccine, this to protect against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis?

But these illnesses aren't contracted by sexual activity. And this is the crux of the matter, just as it was in 2007 when opponents to the HPV "mandate" said protecting girls against a potentially cancer-causing STD would promote promiscuity.

The logic apparently being that, if you have sex before marriage, you deserve to risk dying an early and painful death.

The "abstinence or die" crowd, heads firmly in the sand — or some other dark place — refuse to consider that teenagers have sex. Even those from the best homes. Or that respectable women get raped, or have cheating husbands or faithful lovers who have no idea they carry the virus.

On Friday, the House voted 61-33 to repeal the law, which moves Byron's bill to the state Senate. That day, I got an e-mail from a man whose name I won't use. I'll only say he's a director with a local business.

He relates that his daughter had once been date-raped. She contracted HPV and had to endure the intense pain of treatment.

If that wasn't awful enough, his wife was jogging one day and she, too, got raped. She, too, got HPV. More intense pain.

Extreme situations? Perhaps.

But every year cervical cancer strikes more than 12,000 women in the U.S. Every year, it kills 4,000 of them.

HPV vaccines would prevent about 75 percent of these infections and deaths.